


Throwing Fistfuls of the Sands of Time

by Mallory_Clayborne



Category: RWBY
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Casual Fireball/Taiqrow, Casual Gears of War/Ironqrow, Casual Sex, Domestic Fluff, Drunk Qrow Branwen, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Injuries, Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Linear Narrative, Slice of Life, Some Ozma/Qrow but it's our Ozpin letting Ozma be around, Suicidal Thoughts, Team STRQ - Freeform, The only romantic AND sexual relationship for Qrow here is the Cloqwork, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Which... does that count as Qrow having a God Kink?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23794036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mallory_Clayborne/pseuds/Mallory_Clayborne
Summary: Qrow Branwen; 44; old enough to be called a veteran Huntsman by now. He's lived through a lot of moments.Here are fifty of them.Prompted by an old livejournal trope, 1sentence, Set Epsilon if anyone's interested. :)
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Qrow Branwen/Ozpin
Comments: 9
Kudos: 23





	Throwing Fistfuls of the Sands of Time

**Author's Note:**

> This was a thing back in the days of yore; I remember it from somewhere around 2012. Back in the day I definitely filled some of this style of prompt, probably about Pokémon or Hetalia or Attack on Titan, and they would have been on fanfiction.net. To save myself from embarrassment I removed that account in about 2017 (good job, past me, for hiding the cringe of past past me). 
> 
> Anyway, I’ve got a lot of longer fluid prose WIPs that should appear in May for Cloqwork and June for Snowbird, so I decided to do something like this to take a break, almost. I debated doing a proper, rule-abiding drabble but that didn't seem worthy posting here alone. I'm unconvinced this is even enough, but whatever. Though fun fact, 'Qrow' is 7% of the words in this.
> 
> The only thing that might need clarifying story-wise is that I call the Atlas Headmaster before James ‘Tomas Feldgrau’, so that’s who he is. The other mentioned non-canon character… well, it should be fairly obvious who she is. 
> 
> Apologies for how grammar occasionally may go walkabout in this. Hope you enjoy! :)

**01 - Motion**

Qrow awoke with the edges of his vision softly hazy and no memories of the night before, and he gazed up at the ceiling of the glass and metal office, his mind soothed by the familiar, steady rotation of the massive gears. 

**02 - Cool**

They’d considered that the higher they flew, the harder it would be to breathe, but they’d completely forgotten it would get colder, and when the twins came to land abruptly they shivered in tandem as they transformed back. 

**03 - Young**

He never thought he’d say this, but Qrow felt like the responsible one of the three when asking Summer and Tai if they were sure Yang was old enough to learn to ride a pushbike yet. 

**04 - Last**

Qrow threw Ruby high into the air and she giggled and shrieked, and Tai said it was probably a good thing that mommy was out on a mission and she wouldn’t be back soon enough to see it. 

**05 - Wrong**

Of course, Summer would never see anything Qrow or Tai did with the girls ever again. 

**06 - Gentle**

Qrow found the cane first and holstered it above Harbinger, before lying on his side next to the scorched corpse the Fall Maiden had left for him and carefully intertwining their fingers, his last contact with Ozpin soft and quiet. 

**07 - One**

Rhea Lapunova Branwen wanted the whole thing to be over already, but she wasn’t particularly lucky since this stupid second baby was insisting on taking forever to come out, when she would have been perfectly happy with just the daughter she’d finished having an hour ago. 

**08 - Thousand**

Qrow had been this close to throwing up at the sensation of a horrendously high number of baby deathstalkers crawling all over him when he fell into the nest, and Summer couldn’t hide her laughter with fake sympathy as she helped pull him free from the awful feeling of all those creepy little legs. 

**09 - King**

Statues and paintings of the man who’d led Vale and Vacuo in the war always gave Qrow the strangest feeling to look at, like a secret nobody else in the gallery could ever know, probably because Qrow knew what that man - or a version of him, at any rate - looked like on his back and begging. 

**10 - Learn**

Tai gave first aid to the kid who’d been hit by the chair that had been thrown across the classroom, while Qrow had his hands splayed in front of him to say he wasn’t a threat as he edged closer to the other kid, who could barely stop screaming, and was beginning to realise just what teaching could mean beyond combat and mathematics. 

**11 - Blur**

Qrow tried not to cry in front of Yang and Ruby, but it was like looking at them through a kaleidoscope as they asked for the millionth time how long it was until mommy came home. 

**12 - Wait**

It had been a long, long time since him and Tai had been so lonely they’d resorted to sharing a bed quite so intimately, but Yang’s knock on the bedroom door and her sleepy little head poking into the room was enough for Qrow to quickly pull his hands out of Tai’s shorts and make that time a little longer. 

**13 - Change**

When James became Headmaster, Qrow bitched about it at first, but it didn’t take long until he’d been fucked against the windows at the top of Atlas Tower and it was enough to make him decide he could get used to this. 

**14 - Command**

“You come to the lands of _my_ tribe again, Qrow, and I won’t hesitate to have you slaughtered.”

**15 - Hold**

Ruby approached him as he went to disappear upstairs in the Cotta-Arc house and wrapped her hands around the new bottle of vodka he was gripping, and he only resisted for a second before letting her take it away. 

**16 - Need**

There was something reassuring about the fact that he and Raven responded well to the same medication.

**17 - Vision**

Standing in this truthful nightmare created by Jinn, the world could have collapsed in and crushed Qrow to death and he wouldn’t have cared. 

**18 - Attention**

Tai asked Qrow if it was their fault they hadn’t noticed Summer never mentioned that Ozpin didn’t give her the last mission, and Qrow hesitated too long before saying there was nothing either of them could have done. 

**19 - Soul**

Qrow would never know what it was like to talk to Ozpin alone, and he tried not to dwell on that. 

**20 - Picture**

He’d never be able to keep Summer’s photo album as meticulous as she did, but he refused to let it end where it could have. 

**21 - Fool**

STR really hadn’t expected that tricking Qrow into wearing a skirt for a laugh would have led to him owning more skirts than he did jeans, but they all three had to admit he looked damn good, not to mention Ozpin really didn’t seem to mind. 

**22 - Mad**

Qrow asked Ozpin to come back to bed, but he’d snapped coldly, so unusually, that he had to teach, and Qrow had never wanted to curl up into a ball and sob more than while realising he’d managed to piss off the one man who he’d never wanted to run away from. 

**23 - Child**

He looked down at Yang, and she was wrinkly and screaming and there was still some weird gunk in her blonde hair, but then one of her tiny newborn starfish hands curled reflexively around the charm on his necklace and he fell in love. 

**24 - Now**

Not that he’d admit it to her face, or admit it to James either, but Winter Schnee was damn good in a fight, and he was happy enough to let her take the lead on when to get the drop on these Sabyrs.

**25 - Shadow**

Earlier in her teen years, Yang had been quick to tell Qrow his music sucked and flip to a house playlist, but when Blake put on those very same songs Yang didn’t complain a word, and Qrow would have been offended if he hadn’t been so happy for her. 

**26 - Goodbye**

“I was going to Haven anyway, Tai, so it makes no difference to me to follow the route these kids take.”

** 27 - Hide **

‘Nobody would look twice at a murder’ was an often misunderstood phrase of Qrow’s, but it made a lot of sense when he was surrounded by a dozen other crows. 

**28 - Fortune**

Clover smiled that stupid cocky smile at Qrow as he sidestepped to avoid a falling rock perfectly. 

**29 - Safe**

Getting Ruby down from the destroyed top of Beacon Tower was his priority, and so Qrow ignored the ringing in his ears and the way his heart was breaking as it became obvious even Ozpin couldn’t have survived this cataclysm. 

**30 - Ghost**

His hand absently touched the back of his neck as he watched Oscar playing cards with RNJR, and the memory of Ozpin’s lips pressing down his spine was one he chased away before he felt like a creep. 

**31 - Book**

Watching Maria throw Bartleby’s journal into the snow where nobody would find it again made Qrow feel a fraction better. 

** 32 - Eye **

Maybe he was getting old and his powers weren’t the same any more, but whenever he turned back into a human his lashes were all sticky and weird with the mucus stuff that his corvid form used to flush out all of the bits of leaves and bugs that blinded him while he was flying. 

**33 - Never**

He pressed his face into the pillow and screamed, muffling himself enough that the kids downstairs wouldn’t hear him over the TV, and thought about how if Salem couldn’t be defeated, then none of them would ever escape this hell. 

**34 - Sing**

It took him a while, but eventually he seemed to get the hang of crowing as a form of communication. 

**35 - Sudden**

One second he was fighting and yelling and the next he was struggling to comprehend how he was able to see Clover and Tyrian and Harbinger all at the same time and then the snow went red. 

**36 - Stop**

Atlas Academy was weirdly sterile compared to Beacon, but Qrow had to admit, he was enjoying sitting in a massive common room with RWBYJNR and blasting music and drinking nothing but soda. 

**37 - Time**

Qrow had never suspected Ozpin could genuinely manipulate continuous chronology into something quantum and discrete that he could shorten or extend at will as much as the first time that Ozpin knelt in front of Qrow and gave him the filthiest look. 

**38 - Wash**

Yang’s Aura had finally regenerated enough to stem the blood running from her arm but Qrow had so much of it on his shirt he wasn’t sure it would ever come clean again. 

**39 - Torn**

Tai had ripped out his ACL in being the one of them to take that blow when neither of them had any Aura left, but at least the village was safe and Qrow categorically couldn’t blame his Semblance for Tai’s injury. 

**40 - History**

Team STRQ were the first full student team to be recruited into Ozpin’s war, and as much as Leo and Tomas were worried about the consequences, Ozpin and Theo couldn’t have been happier with their newest warriors. 

**41 - Power**

When Ozpin reintroduced him to the Ace Op Captain Ironwood, who Qrow had last seen as an Atlas student during the Vytal Festival, James was the same height, slightly more muscular and about 50% more metal than Qrow remembered. 

**42 - Bother**

Qrow was maybe two bad thoughts away from slitting his wrists while under the guise of cleaning the bathroom for Saph to fix the fact Weiss and Ruby had mistakenly rescued him from the Apathy when Nora stuck her head round the door and told him he was in a team with his nieces for a game of Monopoly and wordlessly took away his penknife and put it in her pocket. 

**43 - God**

It would be a lie for Qrow to say that sex with Ozma was anything less than pure euphoria. 

**44 - Wall**

Qrow and Raven gazed at the beautiful new cabin on Patch and came simultaneously to the same realisation that this would be the first actual house they’d call home. 

**45 - Naked**

Qrow and Bartholomew found the dead Huntress half a mile outside the village on Solitas, and neither were particularly surprised to find someone had already taken her clothes to defend themselves against the cold. 

**46 - Drive**

The first time Yang gave Qrow a lift to Signal on Bumblebee, he’d expected to fear becoming another crash statistic, but even though she rode faster than Tai, her reflexes seemed a fraction sharper. 

**47 - Harm**

Qrow had been terrified Amber would die in his arms while he carried her home. 

**48 - Precious**

Yang had fallen asleep with her arm through the bars of Ruby’s crib and holding her little sister’s hand, and Qrow and Summer and Tai stood peacefully on the threshold and savoured this perfect moment as a happy family. 

**49 - Hunger**

Qrow had been away for so long and they’d all been so stressed with Spring still missing and Fall still dying that he was indistinguishable from an animal as he finally got into bed with Ozpin and fucked him hard enough to bruise terribly. 

**50 - Believe**

They looked into each other’s eyes and traded secrets destructive enough to raze the world to the ground and then they kissed and Qrow and Ozpin didn’t want or need marriage because the promise of complete and utter sacrifice they made to each other was enough. 


End file.
